JOE HIGGINS, Socialist Party (SP) member of the Dail (Ireland's Parliament) and one of the SP members recently jailed for defying the "bin tax" levy on Dublin householders, has spoken to thousands of workers in a very successful visit to Australia...

Tens of thousands of people came to Manchester for Europride over the bank holiday. From Stockholm to Stockport, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and straight people gathered for the parade and party, celebrating equality...

THOUSANDS OF nursery nurses in Scotland were recently involved in the biggest and longest indefinite strike for 20 years. The dispute has helped to give confidence to other workers struggling against low pay and job cuts but it also...

SOME OF the most exploited sections of Britain's workforce are young people. If you are under 22 you're not eligible for the full minimum wage, at present £4.50p an hour. If you're between 18-21 there is a minimum wage of £3.80 an hour...

Defending the 35-hour week: Minister for Europe and former trade union official Denis MacShane has recently claimed: "An obsession with the 35-hour week is now part of Europe's economic problem, not the solution."...

IT SOUNDS like a rip-off from Frederick Forsyth's novel The Dogs of War in which mercenaries, organised by members of the British establishment, overthrow the dictator of 'Zangaro' to get hold of its vast platinum reserves...

THE REPUBLICAN National Convention has invaded New York City. George Bush and company are meeting four miles from the site of the 9/11 terror attacks, just two weeks before the third year anniversary of the attacks...

Bush loses 'war on terror': GEORGE BUSH has finally admitted that the 'war on terror' can't be won. But not before an estimated 37,000 Iraqi civilians and over 1,000 coalition troops have been killed in Iraq in the name of this unwinnable war...

JOHN KERRY is doing his best to lose the US Presidential election but can George Bush steal it as he did the one in 2000? Gore Vidal, in a collection of brilliant essays on the history and contemporary situation in the USA, warns that...

Nicaragua 1979: ON 19 July 2004 thousands of Nicaraguans gathered in Managua's main square, once called Revolution Plaza, to remember the day 25 years ago when they celebrated the fall of the hated Somoza dictatorship and the coming to power of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)...

European Social Forum (ESF): THE EUROPEAN Social Forum (ESF) in London will begin with a huge rally on Thursday 14 October, and finish on Sunday 17 with a large demonstration through central London against war and the occupation of Iraq...

I RECENTLY had the dubious pleasure of attending an American-style motivational workshop designed to get me back into the workforce. In a hot stuffy room near the Elephant and Castle in south London, I was introduced to GOALS - gaining...

Wembley Stadium: THE LOCK-OUT OF 250 workers who were employed in the construction of the new Wembley Stadium is continuing. The workers were sacked at two hours' notice on 10 August. Their dispute has since been made official by the GMB union, which...

Bristol campaign: "WE DON'T need to consult the public over casualty - keeping it open would put patients in danger." This was how North Bristol NHS Trust told local people that Southmead Hospital's Accident and Emergency (A&E) department, which has served north and north west Bristol for decades, was closing without consultatio...

WHEN THE head of the bosses' organisation calls trade unions increasingly irrelevant, you can guarantee it comes from his fear of increasing militancy from workers rather than a genuine concern over our welfare!...

THE PCS is preparing to ballot its 310,000 members for strike action against New Labour's job culling plans. Chancellor Gordon Brown has told the union and everybody else that he won't be put off his plans to sack 104,000 civil servants...

Join the action: FRIDAY 17 September will be a day of action against low pay. Every week International Socialist Resistance (ISR) and Socialist Party members are meeting workers of all ages - but particularly young workers - who are fed up with low pay...

THE HOSTAGE takers who seized 1,200 children, parents and teachers in Beslan reached a new level of barbarism. Young children were denied food and water. Many were shot by the hostage takers, even before the bloody mayhem which ended...

THE BLOODY end to the school hostage crisis in Beslan, North Ossetia, angered, sickened and shocked people around the world. Officially, more than 340 died, and the figure is expected to rise substantially. Many hundreds are injured...

Capitalism is to blame...: THE HORRIFIC massacre of children, parents and teachers at High School No1 in Beslan, North Ossetia, reached a new level of barbarity. The hostage-takers crossed the line between humanity and inhumanity. They deliberately targeted children...

AROUND 500 Swansea council workers marched through the city centre last week in solidarity with the 102 IT staff who have been on strike for over a month in opposition to the proposed privatisation of their department...

LAST MONTH, Shaun Brady - the right-wing general secretary of the railway union Aslef (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) - was dismissed from office by the union's executive committee for gross misconduct...

THE CONTROVERSIAL Tolerance Zones (Scotland) Bill and the British government's consultation document on prostitution, Paying the Price, have sparked a real debate about how to deal with the issue of prostitution...

SINCE THE end of July, tens of thousands, mainly in east Germany, have demonstrated every Monday against government cuts. Last Saturday, 11 September, 10,000 blind people protested in Hanover against the Lower Saxony state government's...

WHILE MOST people in Britain were preoccupied with the terrorist outrage in North Ossetia, with a worsening economic situation, price rises and the daily struggle to make ends meet, what were the priorities of Tony Blair and his New Labour government?...

WE WILL be targeting Jack Fulton's, a cheap frozen food shop, on the ISR day of action. Fulton's are paying 16 and 17-year-olds £2.80 an hour: even less than the measly £3 per hour minimum wage that the government is planning to introduce...

HAVING ANNOUNCED the sacking of over 100,000 civil servants in the public sector, Tony Blair went to the TUC Congress to try and persuade delegates that he had not lost touch with the concerns of hard-working families...

Cuts in jobs and public services...: "WE HAVE to tell this government that we are fed up with them knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing", Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka told the TUC Conference...

SINEAD DALY'S article on prostitution in last week's socialist raises some very important issues around legalisation and decriminalisation. The debate in Scotland has centred on Tolerance Zones because this is the main proposal in Margo...

JASON HATCH hit the media headlines last week. Dressed as Batman he spent five hours perched on a ledge of Buckingham Palace. A member of Fathers4Justice, he said he was protesting about fathers having restricted or no contact with their...

Manchester: MANCHESTER CITY Council is always attacking young people for hanging around on the streets. But what else can young people do when they have nothing to do and nowhere to go? The council have spent plenty of money in the city centre -...

THE FRONT page headline of This Day read "Total Shutdown" as schools throughout the country were deserted. All the teaching unions joined with the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu - the 1.8 million...

"THIS IS far graver than Vietnam. If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory." William Odon, former head of the US national security agency, is more in touch with the reality of Iraq than George Bush and Tony Blair.

THE TRADE unions are fighting to prevent Ford ending Jaguar car production in Coventry. If the car giant gets its way, 1,200 redundancies will be made. Ford, hoping to avoid an angry reaction, have said 400 jobs will go to Castle Bromwich...

NEWS THAT Ford will end Jaguar car production at the Brown's Lane plant in Coventry has been met here with shock and anger. Now the workers are fighting back. Trade union shop stewards have unanimously agreed to fight the closure with...

PCS General Secretary speaks to The Socialist PCS CIVIL service trade union members are in the frontline of the Blair government's attacks on public-sector jobs and services, with 104,000 jobs threatened. The union's general secretary, Mark Serwotka, spoke to Ken Smith at the recent TUC conference.

"THE THREAT to close 37 JobCentre and Social Security offices in the Department of Work and Pensions is the first tangible evidence of Gordon Brown's plans for the civil service", Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) told the socialist...